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Melting Crayons

December 09, 2010

I love crayons. There is nothing like opening a new box of crayons. At the beginning of the school year, when we shopped for school supplies, I remember standing in front of all of the crayons and hoping my mom would let me get the big box with the sharpener on the back. One the best jobs in the library is Storytime because I get to play with the crayons. We have had the same crayons for about 5 years. This year for storytime, we have new crayons. When the kids saw them, they had the same reaction as I did, Wow, new crayons!

Now, you may wonder what we did with the old crayons. Well, being the crafty person that I am, I reused them, of course. How? You ask. I melted them to make more new crayons that have mixed colors. Since I didn’t have one of the fancy crayon makers, I had to find a new way. To do this, I found instructions on Google. There are several ways to melt crayons. Since using the microwave seemed the easiest, that is the first method I chose to try. A tip for melting crayons in the microwave: don’t use your husband’s favorite bowl, especially if it’s plastic. The crayons melted the bowl, and I had to scrape melted crayon off the bottom of the microwave. Next up is the stove top method using the double boiler. I don’t recommend this unless you have a pot that you don’t care if it is ruined. Finally, I baked them. This worked well. I used an old mini-muffin tin and sprayed it with non-stick spray. Success! Now I can’t wait to take them to storytime to use. I know the kids will be excited too.